Gorel and the Pot Bellied God (10 page)

There was a whisper ahead, and Sereli reappeared. She motioned with her hand, not speaking. Gorel followed her, the girl Tonar by his side. They came to the dark opening, and stepped through.

The space beyond was indeed a cavern. The darkness here was broken by lines of faint light, and it took Gorel a moment to realise that the lichen on the walls was glowing. In the weak light he had the sense of an immense space, much larger than perhaps should have been there, as if the darkness beyond reached farther and farther away, never quite ending. The girl Tonar took his hand again, and he felt her shiver. He stepped forward and hit a low wall, and almost keeled over. Pain flared, and he pressed it down. He stood still. His eyes fought to absorb what light there was. Gradually, the place they were in resolved itself around him, a ghostly outline, and he involuntarily drew back.

The thing before him was not a wall, but a sarcophagus.

A long, stone coffin, rising out of the ground, and to its sides, ahead of him, spreading out in all directions, identical objects, the stone chipped and ancient, a whole mausoleum hidden underground, a maze within the maze of the temple’s tunnels. Gorel bent over the nearest sarcophagus, saw the transparent cover, and through it – the thing inside.

It was… he could not quite define it, even to himself. His eyes seemed tricked by the faint light, by the play of darkness over the creature. It was no skeleton, no corpse: something living, something hideously deformed, terribly alive, but caught, in restless sleep: there was the aura about this place, Gorel realised, as of the place between the worlds, the thin membrane that separates the living from the gods. Someone – some thing – had trapped these creatures here in an eternal sleep. He moved to the next coffin, and the next, and each time his eyes shied away, the creatures within too horrible, too terrible to comprehend. They were to the Mothers’ children what great trees were to seedlings. There was the sense of awesome, terrible power in those sleepers in the earth, and it frightened Gorel.

He felt Tonar shaking beside him, and held her close to him, engulfing the small, fragile body in his arms. Her heart beat against his chest, and as he felt it he could somehow sense the thing in the coffin responding, a flutter of the closed eyelids, a minute shift in the massive frame, and he pushed her away from him, and shook his head, and knew that they had to get away.

He put his lips close to the girl’s ear and said, barely moving his mouth, his words a barely-felt whisper of air, ‘Do you know the way?’

He felt her shake her head, but her lips were against his skin and she whispered, ‘We must go through them. I do not know the way any more.’

He stroked her cheek and again felt the things respond, somehow aware of them now, and hungry, and he quickly took his hand away. He turned, and saw Sereli was already ahead, walking softly between the stone tombs, her Drowned God’s gun still held in her hand, like a long, muted flute. He motioned to Tonar. They followed Sereli between the tombs.

How long had they walked like that, lost in that underground burial chamber? If the tunnels seemed like hours, time here in this primeval darkness had entirely lost its meaning. There was the sense of ancient, malevolent hunger growing around him with every step he took. Time was locked away here, not banished but dormant, and with each careful step time peeled away further, was nothing but a dream. On and on they went amongst the sleepers in the dark, and with each step the fear was greater, taking hold of Gorel and not letting go. He remembered again his childhood, the time his father took him through the Dark Wings, to the place in the earth where the roots lived, where the enemies of Goliris were bound to a timeless death, and he shivered. The air grew thick with menace, a hungry silence waiting to be filled.

At last they passed through the last row of tombs, and beyond them was an exit, a faint natural light coming as from far away. The relief at seeing it was complete. It was then, unwisely – or perhaps, by weakness, he had finally succumbed to the suggestion of the shades – that he drew the girl Tonar to him. Without thought, aware only of a desperate need that had been building inside him ever since he first saw her, but hadn’t realised until now, until this moment, when it came to him, this strange feeling – he would never have called it love: he kissed her.

Her lips were against his, his tongue was in her mouth, her body clasped against his and he thought – I will never let you go. It was then, in that moment of unguarded happiness, that the first creature broke through his sarcophagus.

Gorel tore away from Tonar; the floor felt slippery under his feet; his head was swimming with a sort of dust that had nothing to do with the gods; somewhere in the distance, a voice – he thought, Sereli – shouting, ‘Gorel, you fucking idiot!’ – and something enormous, far larger than the tomb that had held it for so long, rising above them all, spreading out wings that were like cemetery earth, like flame, like the water of a drowning, like rancid air, and a terrible voice laughed, and the sound echoed through the cavern.

‘Get out of the way!’ he heard someone shout and again thought – Sereli. He felt dazed. She was standing side by side with him now, and she held the Drowned God’s gun to her lips, and she blew on it.

The thing above them roared. A sort of music came out of the gun; the sound of a body drifting slowly to the depths of the sea, the voices of the world above gradually fading away in its notes, succumbing to the silence of the water: it had the resonance of doomed fight in it, as of a man struggling to breathe and encountering only water. The thing roared again and its wings spread impossibly-wide, filling up the cavern, and from here and there, there were sounds of other things moving, shifting, coffins creaking as they began to waken.

Gorel firing at the thing, once, twice, both guns blasting, the bullets flying at the head, the wings, the grotesque torso. A huge inhuman skull laughing at him. Gorel shouting, ‘Go! Go!’ Sereli still aiming the Drowned God’s gun at the thing, the wings beating unbearable heat, the great head laughing, and yet –

He could sense something underneath the thing’s display. A weakness. Only a small thread was tethering the thing to waking reality, a thread provided by Gorel himself. Cut the thread, and the thing would slumber. He watched as Sereli charmed it with her gun, slowing the creature, diminishing it somehow. He pushed Tonar towards the light. She ran. Then he turned and pulled from behind his back the long, tube-like weapon he had brought with him, its weight an ignored burden on his back. Not his cindergun. Not this time. But another weapon, from his adoptive father’s smithy in the Lower Kidron, a long thick tube which he held up on his shoulder and aimed at the creature, thinking – this is how it is always resolved, guns against sorcery, and there can be only one winner.

‘Go!’ he said, speaking to Sereli, and she backed away, towards the light, but still aiming her gun, still trying to slow down the creature as around them others were shifting, growing restless in their coffins, trying to wake up. They were drugged, Gorel realised. He could recognise it, all his senses on alert. Drugged by the dust of the gods, and sluggish with it, and not wanting to give it up.

Sereli, at last, turned and ran. The thing above Gorel roared, and its head snaked forward, ready to take Gorel –

He aimed the tube and pressed the trigger. A canister shot out of the camber, as large as a fist, and slammed into the creature’s face, penetrating into the head, and Gorel pressed the trigger and shot again, the creature roaring, screaming, two holes growing in his gigantic skull, and –

Gorel turned and ran. There was a hiss, a roar of anger and confusion, and then all sound stopped, froze; and finally returned.

The explosion threw Gorel through the air and slammed him against the ground. The last sound he heard was of falling rocks. Then there was only silence, and darkness, and fevered dreams, in which gigantic children played around in an open meadow, a game that seemed eternal, with no beginning or end.

He came to in a grassy meadow. A brook was bubbling nearby. He could smell jasmine, and frangipani and cloves and, more disturbingly, the scent of the flower Mistress Sinlao had called samtora, and grew in her garden, and which aided procreation. When he opened his eyes he saw Sereli.

She grinned when she saw him. ‘Did you see that thing?’

‘I saw it.’

‘Big and nasty, Gorel. Like you.’

He tried to smile, couldn’t. Stretched, and every muscle in his body ached. ‘Where are we?’ he said.

‘The garden, apparently. Nobody here.’

‘The sanctum sanctorum?’

‘I guess. It’s what your toy-girl says. Can’t see anyone around.’ She made a gesture with her hand. ‘Can’t say it looks like much, considering. It’s just a fucking garden.’

‘You’re not into gardening, Sereli?’

She scowled and he laughed, and felt better. He sat up. It was peaceful there. Is this it? He wondered. It seemed too easy… then he thought of the sleepers in the earth and shuddered. Still. Now that they were finally there, it did not, as Sereli had said, look like much.

He stood up. ‘What is she doing?’ he said.

Sereli turned with him and shrugged. Ahead of them, crouching by a small pool, was Tonar. ‘She’s been like that ever since we dragged you up here. Took some doing, too.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No problem.’

She flashed him a smile, then leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. ‘I wonder where Kettle is,’ she said, and her hand trailed down his body, and she came and stood close to him, pressing her body into his, and he could feel her heat and found himself responding to it.

Wait. He had felt like this before. The House of the Mothers of Jade… he pulled away from Sereli, ignoring the hurt look on her face. ‘What is she doing?’ he said again, pointing at Tonar. Sereli made a face. ‘Staring at the water?’

Gorel shook his head. There was an air of enchantment in the air, of sorcery. He strode to the small pool and stood looking down. Tonar hadn’t moved. He put his hand on her shoulder, gently, and said, ‘What is it?’

She didn’t reply. She was frozen, and suddenly he was concerned. He shook her. Still she did not respond. ‘Tonar?’

Nothing.

He stared down at the water. The surface was calm and smooth, reflecting back at him his own face. He stared into his mirror-image’s eyes, seeing them like dark pools, opening before him, showing him –

The surface was smooth and calm like a mirror.

A mirror.

His eyes were pools, his eyes were mirrors, reflecting back his own image to him. He stared into his own eyes, could not tear away. His image disappeared, and in its stead –

He was walking through the palace grounds of Goliris. All around him the leaves were falling, and the great building rose before him, dark and forbidding but home, to him it had always been home, right up to the point he was kidnapped and sent across the World… he was walking through the grounds and met nothing living. The leaves fell down and the ground was covered in their rotting remains. He came to the palace doors and they were open. He stepped into the Great Hall and there were shadows inside, whispering, and the air smelled disused and abandonment. He tried to shake himself away from the image and couldn’t. When he closed his eyes he could smell the jasmine, the frangipani, hear the trickling of a brook somewhere nearby, but he could not wake up. When he opened his eyes he was standing in the Great Hall of Goliris and there was nobody there. He stepped towards the throne and saw himself.

He was sitting on the throne, an aged, aged man, his arms on the throne withered, his eyes blind, dark like two subterranean pools. He approached this image of himself and knelt down, and tears came into his eyes. How can I come back? He pleaded to his old self on the throne. How can I avenge what had been done if I am not there, if I am destined to wander the World forever, never to return home?

His other self did not reply. Blind eyes stared into the darkness. At last, a voice like the stirring of dead leaves, speaking in his head. What do you do, Gorel of Goliris? Do you really seek your home? Or are you content with your life, a hired hand, a hired gun, crawling through the swamps of the World like a lizard, like a snake, crawling on your belly in the mud? Tell me true.